Trying to write in the aftermath of grief is harder than I ever imagined it would be. Good stories demand emotional resonance. Writing something worth reading requires tapping into the same well of memories and feelings where the grief resides, raw and ready to spill over. It is far less painful to drift from day to day on the surface, hiding in the safety of the superficial.
It has been seven months since I lost my dad to ALS. So much of the past two years has been so laden with unspeakable sorrow that it simply becomes easier to lock the door on emotion. To open the door to anything deeper is to risk tumbling back into a very dark place.
As I take baby steps back into the world of creative expression, I find myself searching for those moments of unexpected inspiration I used to see. Like fireflies winking in the darkness of a late-summer night, the mundane is full of tiny glimmers of joy, of wonder, of humanity and love and tragedy and hope, if only one can bear to be open to seeing them.
I remember a man who had lost his wife telling me that after she died, he would sometimes go into her room and lie in her bed in the afternoon sun with their cats to feel close to her. It seemed such an intimate picture, I felt honoured that he would share that glimpse of their love with me. At the time, it felt so vulnerable, so personal, it seemed it would be a betrayal of trust to share it with anyone else. I hoarded it like a precious gem to be mine alone to take out and remember. Even now, it brings tears to my eyes.
It’s not always so sad. Along with the bittersweet comes the mystery of the partial overheard conversation.
“Like, holy, did he keep her in the woodshed the whole time they were together?”
“Well, they had no electricity, and they heated with wood.”
Who did he keep in the woodshed? Was it a pet she didn’t like? Or was it … her? Why no electricity? Why aren’t they together anymore? How long could that have lasted? The questions tumble over each other, begging for a story.
In the freezer aisle at the grocery store, perusing the frozen ready meals, a young man says to his female companion, “We could just get ice cream sandwiches.”
“Okay,” she replies.
Wide-eyed, he responds, “I was only kidding. That’s not a lunch.”
“I wasn’t,” said she.
What a light-hearted moment, a gift of a smile.
Or what about the way the spring peepers sound in the darkness of the first warm nights? Or the way the afterglow of sunset paints the sky a hundred shades of peach and pink? Or how the crack of thunder can make you hold your breath until lightning splinters the inky sky? Or the feeling of floating in calm, clear, bottomless turquoise water, weightless and worriless? They’re poetry in living colour, waiting to be transcribed.
These moments—strange, sweet, stunning, sometimes silly—are a reminder that inspiration doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it just nudges. Sometimes, it catches you in a grocery store aisle or flickers through the trees at dusk, asking nothing, just offering a little light. These unexpected nudges of inspiration invite you back into writing, even if you’re not fully ready to throw the door open.
Maybe it’s enough sometimes just to notice.
Aly Writes 